FIRST SECTION
CASE OF KONEČNÁ v. SLOVAKIA
(Application no. 22083/21)
JUDGMENT
STRASBOURG
22 January 2026
This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision.
In the case of Konečná v. Slovakia,
The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:
Davor Derenčinović, President,
Artūrs Kučs,
Anna Adamska-Gallant, judges,
and Liv Tigerstedt, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 22083/21) against the Slovak Republic lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 19 April 2021 by a Slovak national, Ms Judita Hana Konečná (“the applicant”), who was born in 2002 and lives in Žilina, and was represented by Ms E. Kováčechová, a lawyer practising in Banská Bystrica;
the decision to give notice of the complaints concerning the conditions of detention, prison restrictions applied to the applicant and unjustified pre-trial detention under Articles 3, 5 and 8 of the Convention to the Slovak Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Ms M. Bálintová, and to declare the remainder of the application inadmissible;
the parties’ observations;
the decision to reject the Government’s objection to the examination of the application by a Committee;
Having deliberated in private on 18 December 2025,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The application concerns the applicant’s continued pre-trial detention in connection with her prosecution for the murder of her friend and classmate who died on 16 May 2019 of multiple cutting and stabbing wounds in a flat where the applicant, who was 16 years old at the time, had lived with her mother and where she and the victim had been present at that moment.
2. On 20 May 2019 the applicant was arrested, remanded in custody and, on 27 November 2020, convicted by the Žilina District Court and sentenced to 12 years and four months’ imprisonment. She was detained in Žilina prison (the “Prison”), where she stayed in a cell with other female prisoners or alone.
3. Between 23 May 2019 and 26 May 2020, the applicant was detained in the psychiatric department of the Trenčín Hospital for Charged and Convicted Persons (the “Hospital”) but she was transferred to the Prison several times for attending court hearings. A request from her father for her to be detained separately from adult inmates in the Hospital was rejected due to a lack of space.
4. Various restrictions were imposed on her while in detention, such as restricted recreational activities, restricted access to education, restriction on in-person visits, restraint by handcuffs whenever she was brought before a court, lack of regular health check-ups or medical treatment.
5. Issues of lawfulness and justification of the applicant’s detention were decided by courts on several consecutive occasions, her detention being considered necessary on account of the risk that she would reoffend. The concern over the risk that the applicant would reoffend was linked to the extent and brutality of the attack and the fact that there had been no known motive or trigger for it. Even though an expert in psychiatry had found that keeping the applicant at liberty presented no danger, this was not binding on the court and it was contrasted with the findings of a psychologist to the effect that, since the applicant had been raised in an environment which had been free of conflict, she had not developed mechanisms for processing stress. There was accordingly the risk that, if under pressure, she might again lose control and act in an unpredictable manner. By the nature of this issue, the risk could not be mitigated by alternative measures such as probation under supervision.
6. On 21 April 2021 the Constitutional Court dismissed a complaint lodged by the applicant that her pre-trial detention was unjustified.
7. The application raises issues under Articles 3, 5 and 8 of the Convention.
THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT
8. The applicant complained that her pre-trial detention had been unjustified. The Government submitted that the authorities had provided relevant and sufficient reasons for her detention.
9. The Court notes that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention or inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible.
10. The general principles regarding the right to a trial within a reasonable time or to release pending trial, as guaranteed by Article 5 § 3 of the Convention, have been set out in a number of judgments (see, among many other authorities, Kudła v. Poland [GC], no. 30210/96, § 110, ECHR 2000‑XI; McKay v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 543/03, §§ 41-44, ECHR 2006‑X, with further references; Petrov v. Slovakia, no. 64195/10, § 55, 2 December 2014; and, as regards minors, Nart v. Turkey, no. 20817/04, § 31, 6 May 2008).
11. For the purposes of Article 5 § 3 of the Convention, the applicant’s detention began on 20 May 2019, when she was arrested, and ended with her conviction on 27 November 2020. It was mainly based on the risk of her reoffending and lasted one year, six months and nine days.
12. The Court reiterates that the pre-trial detention of minors should be used only as a measure of last resort; it should be as short as possible and, where detention is strictly necessary, minors should be kept apart from adults (see Nart, cited above).
13. In the present case, the applicant was detained mostly with adult detainees, except for some time she spent alone (see paragraphs 2 and 3 above). Moreover, in the Court’s view, the domestic courts did not properly analyse and did not come to their own conclusion as to the risk of the applicant reoffending. They did not resolve a discrepancy between the psychiatrist’s finding that the applicant was not dangerous and the psychologist’s conclusion that the applicant might attack someone again because she could not manage her stress (see paragraph 5 above). In addition, the authorities failed to consider whether the applicant could be transferred to a special facility for offenders who were minors. Therefore, in the present case, the applicant’s detention cannot be deemed a measure of last resort, as required by the Court’s case-law.
14. As regards the length of detention, the Court has previously found a violation of Article 5 § 3 in relation to a shorter length of pre-trial detention of minors than in the present case (see Selçuk v. Turkey, no. 21768/02, §§ 5 and 32, 10 January 2006, in which the applicant had spent some four months in pre-trial detention when he was 16 years old; and Nart, cited above, §§ 5 and 30, in which the applicant had spent 48 days in detention when he was 17 years old). The Court notes that the applicant was detained in adult prison facilities for more than a year and a half, a significant amount of time, without due justification.
15. The foregoing considerations are sufficient to enable the Court to conclude that the reasons given by the domestic authorities for the applicant’s detention failed to take due account of her personal circumstances. As a result, the applicant’s pre-trial detention was based on grounds which cannot be seen as relevant and sufficient.
16. In these circumstances it is not necessary to examine whether the proceedings were conducted with special diligence (see, for example, Solmaz v. Turkey, no. 27561/02, § 43, 16 January 2007; Kulikowski v. Poland, no. 18353/03, § 51, 19 May 2009; and Kuc v. Slovakia, no. 37498/14, § 59, 25 July 2017).
17. The Court therefore finds that there has been a violation of Article 5 § 3 of the Convention.
18. The applicant also raised other complaints under Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention regarding the prison restrictions, in particular, material conditions of detention, detention alone in a cell without any purposeful activity, lack of full access to education, restrictions on family visits, use of handcuffs when brought to court and inadequate medical assistance.
19. The Court considers that, in the light of all the material in its possession and in so far as the matters complained of are within its competence, these complaints do not meet the admissibility criteria set out in Articles 34 and 35 of the Convention or do not disclose any appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Convention or the Protocols thereto (see Maslák v. Slovakia (no. 2), no. 38321/17, §§ 189-92, 31 March 2022, and Ribár v. Slovakia, no. 56545/21, §§ 87 and 108, 12 December 2024).
20. It follows that this part of the application must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.
APPLICATION OF ARTICLE 41 OF THE CONVENTION
21. The applicant claimed 19,000 euros (EUR) in respect of non‑pecuniary damage and EUR 3,240 in respect of costs and expenses.
22. The Government submitted that the applicant’s claims were excessive.
23. The Court awards the applicant EUR 2,100 in respect of non‑pecuniary damage plus any tax that may be chargeable.
24. Having regard to the documents in its possession, the Court considers it reasonable to award EUR 3,240 covering costs and expenses, plus any tax that may be chargeable to the applicant.
FOR THESE REASONS, THE COURT, UNANIMOUSLY,
(a) that the respondent State is to pay the applicant, within three months, the following amounts:
(i) EUR 2,100 (two thousand one hundred euros), plus any tax that may be chargeable, in respect of non-pecuniary damage;
(ii) EUR 3,240 (three thousand two hundred and forty euros), plus any tax that may be chargeable to the applicant, in respect of costs and expenses;
(b) that from the expiry of the above-mentioned three months until settlement simple interest shall be payable on the above amounts at a rate equal to the marginal lending rate of the European Central Bank during the default period plus three percentage points;
Done in English, and notified in writing on 22 January 2026, pursuant to Rule 77 §§ 2 and 3 of the Rules of Court.
Liv Tigerstedt Davor Derenčinović
Deputy Registrar President